This year's "BE OPEN - Science and Society Festival" marked the 50th anniversary of the Austrian Science Fund FWF. In the spirit of opening up science to the public, the festival showed fundamental research to a broad audience. IIASA was represented in the pavillion featuring the topic of demography.

One of the events on the festival agenda was a symposium on "Social Ecology: Research for a Sustainable Future" with the IIASA collaborator and regular supporter of the YSSP Fund, Dr. Marina Fischer-Kowalski.

After a very inspiring lecture, Fischer-Kowalski was awarded a prestigious prize by the International Society for Industrial Ecology (ISIE) for outstanding contributions to the field of industrial ecology. In the laudatio delivered by the ISIE president, Edgar Hertwich (featured next to Dr. Fischer-Kowalski on the photo above), Fischer-Kowalski was praised for single-handedly merging two academic disciplines of industrial ecology with social ecology when she founded an Institute for Social Ecology in Vienna in the late 1980s.

The last item on the agenda was a panel discussion on the need for a shift to increasingly interdisciplinary research paradigms with eminent participants, including the Austrian Science Fund President, Prof. Dr. Klement Tockner, ISIE President, Prof. Dr. Edgar Hertwich, Prof. Dr. Christoph Görg, Director of the Institute of Social Ecology at BOKU, Prof. Dr. Marina Fischer-Kowalski, IIASA Council member and Head of Research Domain Transdisciplinary Concepts & Methods at PIK, Prof. Dr. Helga Weisz, and the President of the Wuppertal Institute, Prof. Dr. Uwe Schneidewind.

Marina Fischer-Kowalski finished her Ph.D. in sociology, was a professor at the Alpen-Adria University, and founder of the Vienna-based Institute of Social Ecology. She has taught at Griffith (Australia), Roskilde (Denmark), Yale University (USA) and the Universidad Federal de Rio de Janeiro (Brazil). She has been, inter alia, president of the International Society for Industrial Ecology and Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research (PIK). Currently Professor Emerita, Fischer-Kowalski is still involved in teaching and research at the institute she founded and is scientifically supporting the community of a Greek island of Samothraki to be designated for inclusion of the UNESCO biosphere reserves.